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Gwendoline Butler is excellent on the bizarre fantasies of other peoples lives and on modern paranoia overlaying old secrets; and her plots have the rare ability to shock Andrew Taylor, IndependentThe discovery of the mutilated body of Harry Seton shouldnt have concerned John Coffin, Commander of Londons Second City. But the victim, a detective doing undercover work on the sale of illegal pharmaceuticals, had left a note amongst his Ask Coffin. What he meant by this no one seems to know, including his superior, but it appears that Seton had been secretly investigating internal corruption just before his brutal murder. Coffin, acting on private instructions from above, directly involves himself in following up on Setons work only to find that someone is ahead of the game, muddying tracks and destroying evidence.But the Second City is bracing itself for a far greater tragedy. Four boys, each connected to the police in some way, have gone missing, and just as Coffin starts off in Setons footsteps a childs body turns up buried in a shallow grave in common land. That the children have been specifically targeted by someone with a grudge against the police seems obvious; that the perpetrator is deranged is now clear. The only witnesses to the abductions are a gang of roller-bladers, but fear and something else is keeping them quiet.The Second City is gripped by the horror of these events, and horror too comes stalking directly to Coffins door, threatening both him and Stella. But is it Harry Setons nemesis who is seeking out Coffin, or the child-killer still out there in the night